No, I did not watch the Aparna Sen directed film, The Japanese Wife. Infact, the fragments of the story line narrated to me by my mother and a movie freak friend, did not evoke any interest in me either... I was preoccupied with the thought that the story would be too superficial, considering the prospect of a pen-marriage between a Japanese lady and an India rural primary school teacher... It was until I read the original narration of the book by Kunal Basu ( thanks again to Pallav Deb, my akkshaytun, never-ending supplier of books), I was forced to change my perception...
To be in love with someone at a distance of 7 seas and 13 rivers (I could not control my urge to use the translation of the bengali idiom sat sagor ar tero nodir par, an indication of an uncover-able distance) is something very tough, but the tougher part is to stick to it for twenty long years... I could as if feel Snehamay's insecurity even after twenty years of his married life, as my own, when he hesitated to mention to his wife about the visit and stay of his once-could-have-been bride at his place. I could feel the denseness of human emotions when Snehamay wonderes what perception, the lady, whom he rejected twenty years back, had of him...
I could feel the little boy's innocent curiosity towards his kaku's Japanese wife, who was an object of much ridicule mixed astonishment among all the villagers. And at last, I loved it, when contrary to my expectations that, Snehamay would need to attend his wife's funeral, it was his wife who travelled to Shonai, to attend his funeral... A perfect tragic ending... It was all in all a story of a common man, with most ordinary means, whose fate decided to make him a bit different, if not special, from other. In simple words, I loved the book!!!
